Well, i don't have any kids, so i can't offer anything on that front. I don't know how old your kids are and i know accidents do happen, but usually it is kids that their parents didn't properly educate them about guns who have been involved in gun related accidents. People who know nothing about guns are more likely to harm themselves with one. This is just like if people didn't teach their kids to know that speeding cars are dangerous and to look both ways and listen before crossing the road; there would be many more children being hit by cars. I think the best thing would obviously be a safe that has a keypad would be fairly easy to get open in a hurry; rack a round, safety off, and boom. Next thing would be a trigger lock. Another thing would be to practice speed loading so that you could possibly keep ammo in a seperate place until needed and load it on the fly. If you close your bedroom door upon hearing a threat, you should have plenty of time to load. Another thing is that if your arent old enough to learn about guns then they most likely can't operate a shotgun either as long as you keep the chamber empty and closed. Also because of the slide safety on a Mossberg it is a little harder to throw off safety than the 870, albeit not enough to depend on that safety feature only. One other thing, although a rifle or pistol takes more practice to be good at hitting your target, it has the advantage of having a seperate magazine which greatly increases how fast you can load the weapon, which means you can keep the mag in a seperat e place.